Юрий Погудин – Synthesis of Architectural Form. From Meaning to Concept (страница 2)

Therefore, in the search for architectural beauty and expressiveness, it is logical to turn to philosophy and aesthetics as a storehouse of thought, its constructions, its structurality and movement. The deepest source of this kind is the philosophy of Aleksei Fyodorovich Losev, which has melted down into a new synthesis, a new fusion of ancient, medieval, New European German and Russian Christian philosophy.

The ideas and principles of A. Losev's philosophy can become living seeds for new branches of modern architectural propaedeutics. The author of this book, to the best of his ability, has developed the semantic unity of some of these principles with the concepts of architectural propaedeutics. This work resulted in essays on applied architectural aesthetics – a pedagogical system of dialectical architectural form generation for volumetric and spatial compositions.

A textbook on architectural modeling from the Ural State Academy of Architecture and Art , in our opinion, correctly describes the current situation in architecture: "Somehow, the opinion has prevailed that the impending decline of architecture is manifested only in the "lacking skill" of architects. Increasing this skill in all possible ways is seen as a counteraction to this process. It may go as far as recognition and idealization of the results of the work of a limited group of specialists.

Considering the example of the most important historical changes in architecture, one can see that they were associated not with the loss of craftsmanship, but with the "devaluation of stylistic forms." In this way, the Renaissance revalued the Gothic, the 19^th century – the classics, the beginning of our [20 – Yu. P.] century – eclecticism, and then Art Nouveau. Rather, the loss of craftsmanship itself was a consequence of the devaluation of the architectural form. It turns out that the "sacred goal", for which mastery strives, has disappeared.

The devaluation is most clearly expressed in the "feeling of sham randomness of architectural forms.” Sham randomness can in no way convince of its comprehensive justification and realism. Architectural form, therefore, is not just geometry, mass, space, substance, but "an alloy of material with symbolic content, outlined by morphological contours of the form." The form "sweeps along the movements of both our body and our spirit." The truthfulness and organicity of the form are rooted in our consciousness. Spirit and material must be fused together by the meaning. For example, in some objects, the architectural form and material literally coincide, but all this engineering precision does not express any meaning and does not entail any emotions.

When we see in a form only a historical style, only a technical or functional calculation, only the conventionality of language or the irony of the author, we will sooner or later decipher its meaning. However, this meaning is addressed to something different than this form as such. Instead of "referring the viewer to inexhaustible semantic contexts, the form loses its vitality, remaining a conventional sign." <…>

"The fate of the entire architectural culture depends on whether we manage to find a way of thinking that complements scientific analysis and counterposes the diversity of subjective artistic creation to synthesis." [70].

An expressive architectural form, in its inherent meanings, outgrows itself, becoming an intentional existential symbol. Peter Zumthor put it this way: "I did my first two buildings.… It was terrible. I could hear the architectural discussion of the time in my buildings. This was the last time that this should happen to me.... So what is this being myself? It is interesting that in these buildings, which gave me this headache, heart ache, there were things I liked, such as things that did not come from a magazine or from a discussion that I can talk about with somebody. Rather, this is me!" [Quoted after: 58].

The history goes on, and people continue to create. They continue to create architecture as well. New styles replace old ones. Each major style is characterized by a special type of composition. Let's look at the main ones.

Types of Architectural Composition

The development of fine art in general, and the formation of architectural propaedeutics in particular, suggest that there are fundamentally different compositional systems behind the external features and attributes of each of the major styles. In this sense, we can talk about types of composition, each of which has its own internal logic, its own specific structure. At the same time, the individual compositional principles of each of these systems may be included in the arrangement of a different type. But this does not reduce the importance of the originality and uniqueness of a separate compositional system as an internally integrated type that cannot be completely derived from another. We can compare the formation of such a typology with the formulation of the conceptual "DNA" of various architectural styles – with the remark that the "codes" do not encode, but express their specifics.

Next, we will consider in general and essential terms the main historically established types of compositional systems and outline a passage to a new dialectical type developed by the author on the basis of philosophy and aesthetics of Aleksei Fyodorovich Losev.

• Canonical (all "big" styles up to and including Art Nouveau)

• Functional and constructive (Bauhaus, constructivism in the USSR)

• Rationalistic (N. Ladovsky)

• Variative and combinatorial (N. Rochegova, E. Barchugova)

• Intuitive picturesque (K. Malevich, Z. Hadid)

• Bionic

• Dialectical (based on the philosophy of A. Losev)

The first such large type is the canonical composition of classical styles, starting with the ancient Egyptian and ending with the Art Nouveau style. What do such different works as an Egyptian temple and an Art Nouveau mansion have in common?

This is the facade approach to the overall composition of the building, the subtlety of proportional relations, the filigree elaboration of details, the measure, the predominance of symmetry and clear geometric shapes. Most of the classical styles, such as the Greek and Roman architecture of Antiquity, Renaissance, Classicism and Baroque, are based on the order system of composition, which by its nature is a beautiful "garment" of the building. For many people, it has aesthetic fullness and special warmth of forms.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, a functional and constructive type of composition appeared. The general composition of the building, the relative location and the ratio of its parts began to be determined by function and/or structure as priorities. The architecture shed the abundant classical decor as autumn leaves and showed its laconic and strict frame. Regular geometric shapes still prevail, but they are more often connected to each other asymmetrically. The facade is being replaced by working with volume, searching for an asymmetrically balanced expressiveness in the integral structure of the building.

The rationalism of N. Ladovsky stands out against the background of the functional constructivist mainstream of the first half of the twentieth century. This rationalism eventually became the basis of the Russian architectural propaedeutics developed by his students and followers. Ladovsky defined the form guided by two opposite sides: by objective fundamental parameters such as magnitude, mass, tension, etc.; and by the subjective characteristics of the psychophysiological understanding of space by a man. Compositional searches of his students are distinguished by the boldness of their solutions achieving the expressive intensity of forms, but at the same time rationalized by the thought of the comfort of human perception of the city space. Let's call this compositional type rationalistic, after this doctrine.

In modern Russian architectural propaedeutics, lecturers of the Moscow Architectural Institute N. Rochegova and E. Barchugova developed a variable and combinatorial type of composition, which became possible due to the use of computer modeling. The general compositional message is the generation of many different form variants from a few initial "basic" elements – using replication, scaling, displacement, and rotation operations. As a part of such searching, the principles of modernist architecture can still be used to harmonize the composition.

The intuitive picturesque type of architectural composition, which originated in K. Malevich's suprematism, became a kind of "response" to the form rigidly determined by its function and/or structure. The composition with its internal axes is built as a system of spontaneous flows of forms, harmonized by a general equilibrium and a proportional ratio of large masses. The brightest modern representative of this type is Zaha Hadid. Her office has become a center for generating a new style – parametricism. It combines intuitive picturesque artistry with parametric computer modeling of a building as a system, taking into account a variety of specific structural, climatic and other factors.